Blackout
by doctoruth
Summary: Set during Season 1, between Parts 1 and 2 of 'Return to Me'. Containing material that is potentially triggering. Rated M for later chapters.
1. Please

I believe that you think no one's noticed. You know me so well, don't you? When you look in my eyes I know you see things living there. But this time, you think I haven't seen what's happening. You think that I'm like everyone else, for this.

I'm never like everyone else, Santana. I tried to tell you that. _Are you ok _and _can you tell me something_ wouldn't fit in my mouth so I just said _please_ and hoped you would know what that meant. _Please_ was bigger than all the other words, anyway. But it has got lost in between us, because you just look confused and like you can't hold on to anything. You look like-I can't recognize it. I can't tell if you are about to cry or frown, or both, or neither. Your body moves and it is like something waking up. You shake your head but it can't be a reply to my word. It's a shake that is twisted up with what you have just done. A shivering thing that makes me feel weak.

The first time it happened, and I stood there listening to you be sick on the other side of the bathroom door, I felt tight in my body, like it didn't fit me anymore. You scared me. You scare me. You scare yourself, too, I think.

The first time it already felt familiar but I didn't want to believe it would happen again. But it has. It is. You're near me and also somewhere so far from me that I am afraid no one can bring you back. Hearing you again is a sound that makes my mind feel like it's tumbling and it won't ever stop.

Every time I try to make my _please _into more words, I feel a fist in my chest and something clenches in my mouth like my teeth are gasping, like there's someone pulling the air out of my mouth, and I want to sit down. The words I want to say to you. What are the words I want to say to you? I am afraid I will lose them. Or I am afraid I won't ever have found them. Is that what I mean? You make me not sure.

I want to say this: _I am here_. And I want to make it stop. I want you to see. I want so much, and it's not for me anymore. It's all for you. I want for you.

I will play you music, so maybe you will hear what I am saying to you. I'll dance with you. I'll hold your hand whenever it comes near mine. I'll smile at you in the choir room. I'll try to make you understand that I can see you. I will try to show you that it's not too late, I'll try to show you things, I'll try to make it stop by loving you.

Then maybe, if I am so careful. Maybe, if I give you things. Maybe, if I wait for you to see me seeing you.

Maybe I will wake up one morning and turn to you in my bed and know that your smile is matching up with your thoughts. Maybe. If I say it enough, will it be true?


	2. Your Time, My Time

What you're feeling is a now-thing and I know it doesn't have to be an always-thing.

But we're living on time that you're trying to steal, Santana.

And how can I make you see that time won't slow down, can't slow down? How do I make you understand that what you're doing can't last forever? Seeing you is like hearing a drum, only I can't get into its rhythm. Someone's pounding out all the beats echoey and broken around me, but it's an undanceable noise, it's like my body doesn't understand, like it keeps waiting for the beats to fit into a music that won't come.

I play with my own hair, wrapping it around my fingers and twisting it back and forth. I sit on my bed and try not to think of anything. I feel you creep into my mind, even though I know you're always there, really. I can't remember you not being in my thoughts, somewhere, like the water that runs at the bottom of creeks. The water that you like to put your feet into. The water that I think lives on its own current, running around the pebbles even when the water above it wants to go faster. You're just like that: a swirling thing that won't listen to the other parts of my mind, that lives by other rules, that is stronger than all the rest of me, because it's you.

I feel like, if I put the right words in the right order, you will see. But the right words feel like they fall apart whenever I put out my hands for them, or like they're pearls on a necklace and someone is cutting the string, and they're sliding off too fast for me to catch them. But. You're what helps me make the colors in my head into words and now I have to do that by myself, because it's for you that I need to make things make sense. I need you to hear my thoughts. Sometimes I think you can, when I kiss you. If I press my lips against yours carefully enough I can feel it all over you even in the parts where we're not touching. I can feel you hearing me.

When we're alone your hands remind me of birds, fluttering, always wanting to leave the ground. You don't do that in cheer practice. You don't do it in glee club. You don't do it in the hallways, you don't do it at the bleachers, you don't do it in class. When there's anyone else with us your hands are so still. Now your hands are shaking and you won't look me in the eye, like you have finally realized I _know_, that I have seen all the signs. So I take your hands in mine. It's all I can do.

_Santana, dance with me, please_.

It's not what you expected me to say, is it? Is it the right words?

Pulling you next to my body has always felt right, anyway. I wonder if we don't need words, just for now. I can hear music again. Can you? Dancing with you is drowning out the weird drumming and it's because your hand is in my hand, your cheek is against mine.

And I can smell you: that smell which I don't know anywhere else except when you're near me. I forget it when you're not.

I can't imagine what it's made of. It's just you, and because it's like nothing else it leaves when you do.

It's my favorite, though, and when you're near I can't for a minute imagine not knowing it, even though when we're not together I won't be able to remember what it's like. How strange for something I love so much to be so careless.

I hold you right at the bottom of your spine and make sure you are close to me while I move. You like it when I lead you around my room to the notes in my head, so I do that. I think hard on each note so you can feel it in the twitch of my arm and the pull of my hip and the twist of my leg. I wonder if there really is a space below my collarbones like it feels there is. It's like a bottomed out feeling, like when we ride the roller coaster, only it's so much higher, and it's empty and squeezing at once.

I want to kiss you. That will help. So I do: I kiss you while we dance, seeing you behind my eyes even though they're shut, feeling the sharp notches of your spine under my palm and pushing away what that means for a minute with you, kissing you.

I wish time would stop, too.


	3. Doors

You come over on Fridays, when my parents are on their weekly dinner date, and we raid my mother's cupboards and eat everything we can hold until we can't move, and then we fall onto the couch, groaning, and watch TV. And every week, once you've fallen onto the couch, you shift closer and closer to me until your head of golden hair is in my lap.

We used to fall asleep on top of one another on the couch or on the floor half-in sleeping bags, but now I always pull you upstairs to my bed. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night or early in the morning, and I see you even before I've opened my eyes and turned over to look through the dark.

Lately, though, I lie awake waiting until you're asleep. And I have to get up and go to the bathroom on the other side of the house, so you won't hear me as I get rid of everything we ate. I don't know if hiding from you is working. I thought it was but now I'm not sure. I think you see everything, but sometimes you look like you wish you didn't. And sometimes you get a look on your face like shutters banging closed over a window, and I know you don't want anyone to see what you're thinking. Usually I know anyway. But not now. Your eyes are made of something else.

It's not pity. I hate pity, and pity from you would kill me, I know it.

If you get what's going on you haven't said it to me. You won't; not now; even if you hate it as much as me, I think you understand: we talk about everything but I can't talk about this.

I talk about it to myself though. I don't really want to, but I can't seem to help it. I tell myself it's ok even though I know it's not. What I'm doing is like the only door that's open in a house of locked doors.

Tonight I think maybe you're faking, because you're not twitching like you always do when you're asleep. At school you were quiet. And you didn't laugh at my sharp words and jokes, like they were hurting you, too. Or like you thought they were hurting me? You said my name and cut off. But tonight you kissed me, so you're not mad, are you?

You're so still. Even if you're not really asleep, your eyes are closed, which means I get to watch you. I get to look at all the places on your face no one else gets to see, like your eyelids, which I love. I've never told you how beautiful they are and I can't now because it feels too late and too soon at once.

Except you're asleep, or pretending, and so maybe I can. But as soon as I open my mouth I hear my voice saying the words and it's too much. I feel that free-falling thing I get right before I stand on the bathroom scales. So I touch your face instead; I push your hair off your cheek, and tuck it behind your ear, in place again. I think about kissing you. I try to stay in bed. I try so hard, Brittany. But I have to get up. I have to. I can't catch my breath unless I do.

In the bathroom I don't look at the mirror. I think I'll see your face looking at me or that if I see my own face it'll be even worse. I do what I need to do and then it's like I'll be able to sleep next to you again. But when I open my bedroom door you're lying facing me and your eyes are open.

"Are you ok?"

Your words are so quiet and I almost miss them. I know what they are though, and would have even if I hadn't heard. What else can you say? You've said nothing else up until now and I don't think there are any other words that would make sense.

I answer you with a nod and climb back into bed. I don't pull away when you wrap your arms around me. Right now I'm not sure what scares me more. What I've done or that you can't fix it.


	4. Burned

Last Fall you found a leaf half-singed by the bonfire in my backyard and brought it to me, fingers curled around your palm softly-like the way you take my hand, with a care that I think belongs to me, because you're not that careful with anyone else. That's how I knew the leaf was mine even before you put your hand out, letting your fingers open like petals. I put the rusty orange-brown leaf in a heavy book I borrowed from my father's study and left it there and almost forgot about it. But last night I was flicking back and forwards through the book using my thumbs-not reading, just letting the pages pass by, trying to feel what it's like to have all those words inside-and it fell out. Your leaf, twirling onto my bedroom floor.

Now it's thinner than the paper in the book where it was hiding, and all the little crinkles where it once burned have flattened out. But when I look at it close-pulling it up so the light from my window comes through the back of it-I can see all the veins, still there.

It's gotten smaller but it's still the same leaf it was before. It felt so fragile in my hands that I couldn't help but think of you and before the throb in my throat could pull downwards and turn into tears I put the leaf carefully on my desk and found a photo frame and locked it snug behind the glass so it could be safe.

I've put the leaf beside my bed. I look at it when you're asleep and I'm listening for if you're going to get up and go to the bathroom. Some nights you don't, and on those nights I think the leaf looks warmer in the little pieces of light that come through my bedroom window.

That's just my imagination, isn't it? Your leaf doesn't change depending on the light that reaches it, because it's already been injured by whatever burnt it long ago.

Next to me in bed, I can feel you curling closer to my body and without thinking mine moves to meet you, so my back is lining up with your front. I know your asleep-moving and I know your awake-moving and I know the difference between them, too. So I know from your hands at the small of my back that you're awake, because when you're asleep and you move closer they drift up and down and end up in unthinking places on my body. But when you're awake they don't go far, just end up sitting in between our bodies, and you get really close, so there's not any space between us and your face is buried at my shoulder blades and your knees are tucked above my knees-just above, because you're littler than I am-and your feet point like a ballerina's so that your toes can rest flat against my calves.

Sometimes, when you move closer, I can feel your heartbeat, even though your chest isn't pressed flat against my back, because your heart is beating so hard it's like a song running over your body and off your skin. When that happens I know what you want to do, and since I will always want you too, I turn over and kiss you gently, so you know you can kiss me back.

Other times, lately, when you move closer, I can still feel your heartbeat racing along your body, but it's got a different pitch or tune, and it doesn't make the same question. When that happens I think maybe you're scared, not that you want me to kiss you and touch you. So I reach around and undo your laced hands from the small of my back and pull the right one around to my stomach, where I keep it safe in between mine. Sometimes I thumb your palm or squeeze it gently, slower than a heartbeat, in a lullaby rhythm, and most times-most, except when your heartbeat is so loud I'm afraid it'll never slow down again-I can feel the sound of you being scared fall away.

I love your wanting-movements and I don't like your scared ones, but I love that I can make some of your fear go away. I wish I knew how to take all of it. But it's yours, Santana, and only you can get rid of it, I think. I hate watching but if I do anything other than what I am doing, you might catch a breeze, and you'll be like my soft leaf drifting away in the wind. The best I can do is hold you in my hands and wait for you.


	5. Black Stars

_Twelve._

_Thirteen._

_Fourteen._

I can hear you push out the numbers with cut-up breaths every time we reach the starting line marked out on the grass, and I'm listening for your gasps to make sure I stay at your pace.

You're built for moving for a long time at one pace, your body small and compact and efficient, but it's not made for speed. You sometimes joke, _your body's_ _made for everything, Britt_, and all your words pool together in how you draw out _everything _and there's a teasing smile on your face.

Your body doesn't seem to work properly when we do speed training, and wind sprints always hurt you. My body doesn't mind, but then my legs are longer than yours. And I'm not sure I feel any kind of pain the same way you do, anyway. When we run, the sharp rake of my breath inside my lungs is smaller than the good electric feeling in my head and legs and in the air around me. I am always singing to your voice, plucking out soft notes with my footfalls, and I think you run to a beat of nothing, of desperation.

And next to me on the field, your face is squeezed and small-looking and the heat coming off your body doesn't match your paleness: a paleness which is hiding under warmth and the dark of your skin, like a growing thing. And the sweat on your face is a slick, sick, wrong kind. It's not the jeweled and shining wetness of your upper lip during the Indian summer we had this fall. Then, even the middle of the night was hotter than midsummer. And one night you woke me in the dark just to kiss me, and kiss me again, and when you pulled away I could see the light shining on your upper lip, as well as taste your salt on mine.

Here on the football field I'm not paying attention. No-that's wrong-I'm ignoring what I'm supposed to be paying attention to.

I'm just watching you. I've let you fall behind me-not because I want to beat you; why would I ever want to beat you?-but so I can watch you better. When I've run hard enough, I turn. We're at opposite ends of our sprints; I'm running towards you from half a field away; you're running towards me in a slowing, strange shape.

And I see it before it happens. Something passes over your face that looks like all the lights going out. But for a second I think of the opposite from what I'm seeing on your face. I see stars blinking in a black sky.

Later I'll realize that I was seeing what you were seeing. Lights crowding over your vision before it all goes black.

I'm already breathing harder than I think is possible and I hear my heart in my eardrums and my head is beating out an uneven thrum-pound noise and-I can see your left foot trail behind-and I wasn't running fast before. For a second my stomach turns and I can feel a wrong-shiver all over my body, even though I am so hot, and then the twist in my belly clenches into something hard and now I am _running_.

Everyone and everything around me that I was seeing moments ago falls into dark and I can't remember where I am or anything else because all of me is runningrunningrunning-so fast I can't breathe because I have to reach you before you touch the ground. Nothing else has mattered. If I can just reach you. You're all I see, and the space between us measured out in my eyes as my running steps in front of me.

Later I'll think of when you explained to me what adrenaline is. I didn't understand how that would work in my body when I am playing sports because when I run I have always had a happy, steady feeling: the same as when I hit out the beat of a dance routine perfectly in time. But now I realize I've never run in fear before. I've never had to run towards you like this before.

Maybe I won't catch you before you've crumpled into the grass but I will be close.

I run the last ten steps slowing my body even though it doesn't want to because I know I have to change my pace if I am going to be able to get closer to the ground to pick you up without falling over you.

You're so light and even though I am scared my hands feel right when they're tucked under your knees and wrapped around one shoulder and lifting up to bring you close, your neck supported against my upper arm. I forget there's other people there until you're safe in my arms and I am saying _santanasantana please wake up ok _on a loop and jogging towards the school and one of our teammates is pushing on my shoulder and saying my name and then Coach is standing in front of me and barking for everyone to make room and telling me to lay you back down and I don't want to-but-she's Coach-and then I decide I don't care-I don't care who's in charge-and I change direction to go around and I hold you tighter and start running with you in my arms towards the nurse's office.

Once you're on the nurse's bed, the silvery sweat on your face has lifted off and left darker parts at your temples and the back of your neck, marks I think are probably leaving you cold, and I start to press them lightly with a towel. Then you're coming around-something near pink is coming back under your skin-and your eyes flicker under your lids and then they open, dark pupils squeezing tight in the light, and you're looking for me.

Your gulp is dry and your words are tired. _What happened, Britt-why-_

I smooth a hand over yours and the steel feeling in my stomach knots over and over. It feels less hard now I've carried you in my arms to here, but it still gnaws, like I am so mad, and I can't figure out why. Your hand softens under mine, and then you look mad, too. When our eyes meet I see my own anger in your eyes and I know it. We're both furious, even though neither of us is furious at the other one. I think your anger is because you feel like your body has betrayed you. But my anger is because I can't make you see it hasn't.

I forget you asked a question until the nurse speaks behind me.

_You fainted, Santana. Your friend carried you here. Ran with you, actually._

Your anger leaves the room when she says that, even though I know it's going to come back, harder and steadier than before, when someone tells you that your father is on his way. He's going to ask you questions, and I've been trying so hard not to ask you questions, because they will make you hide even more.

Your father takes you home, and I can't go with you. I try, but he puts a careful hand on my shoulder and speaks in that voice like yours, and says I can come by after school. And all through the day I have to be slippery and quick so I don't tell anyone more things than you would want me to. _She's sick_, I say, over and over, and most people stop listening to me after that anyhow. Glee club is harder, but even there my words fall away and no one makes me carry on. Only Rachel looks at me like she sees things I'm not saying, but I can feel the steel still in my belly and I think maybe now it's showing in my blank face, too, because she looks away like she's seen a ghost.


End file.
